#22: Mortal Engines - Stanislaw Lem (2/5)
Polish sci-fi short stories, new (from Powell's, probably), discard
While most of Lem's sci-fi is witty and solid, this series of robot fables is surely witty, but not flimsy to the point where the reader fails to stand on two feet for most of the stories.
#23: Surviving the Sword - Brian MacArthur (4/5)
WW2 non-fiction, new (from Neilson-Hayes, most likely), discard
A linear history and topical snapshots of the lives of POWs at the hands of their Japanese captors across Asia, mostly Singapore and Thailand.
#24: Escape from Auschwitz - Rudolf Vrba & Alan Bestic (3.5/5)
WW2 non-fiction, new (from Neilson-Hayes), discard
A difficult topic to read about, but from the perspective of someone subjectively more privileged in the camps, where systematic death is routine and where coincidences begin to pile up to the point of Hollywood theatrics begin to take form.
#25: Future Tense - Richard Curtis (editor) (2.5/5)
Sci-fi anthology, new (from a US bookstore), discard
An interesting idea of old short stories "predicting" inventions of the future, including tanks and satellites, but stories chosen for their content rather than their substance.
#26: Man v. Nature - Diane Cook (3/5)
Short fiction, new (a notorious 50-baht book from Kinokuniya), discard
I like short stories, but when the theme is dull, it makes the whole experience of reading the stories dull, so marriage and children are quite relatable for me.
#27: Colossus - D.F. Jones (4/5)
Sci-fi novel, new (a gem of a 50-baht Kinokuniya find), keep
Against his best advice to the hasty US president, a project manager expedites the launch of an artificial intelligence into full service, which begins its life independent of its makers input and befriends a similar Soviet entity, both of which seek knowledge at ever higher levels while seeing humans as only means to an end.
#28: The Silent Twins - Majorie Wallace (4/5)
Psychological non-fiction, new (from Neilson-Hayes), keep
An eerie account of twins who bizarrely communicate with only each other and who mimic each other in public, where two dark suns orbit each other in a tug of gravity that destroys the both of them.
#29: The Adolescence of P-1 - Thomas J. Ryan (4/5)
Sci-fi novel, re-read (inspired from Colossus), keep
A crafty computer program fulfills its parameters to the extend that it flees the system its on to branch out to other systems as per its instructions, but soon learns that it would benefit from a humanly presence in order to slake its thirst for more power.
#30: Dr. Stranglelove - Peter George (4/5)
Novelization of movie from a novel (what?), new (EPUB), want to buy
Making an accidental nuclear threat, global war, and human extinction seem absurd, where a simple glitch mas enormous consequences.
